Coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson gave a talk at TED that lays out the evidence that the oceans are slipping away from us \u2014 the compounding factors of intensive overfishing, chemical and material (think plastic) pollution, invasive species and global warming are adding up to more dead zones, more plastic continents, more devastated underwater landscapes, and more lost species.<\/p>\n
From MNN<\/p>\n
In the past several years I have gradually learned of the dangers to the oceans from human activity.\u00a0 The biggest problem is how fast the changes are\u00a0 occurring.\u00a0 There is a huge amount of pollution we can see — literally, garbage — and a huge amount we cannot see. \u00a0 Dead zones without oxygen, where nothing can live, are growing. These are not caused by natural effects, these things are caused by humans.\u00a0 We need the ocean to support all life on earth.\u00a0 People who say that the oceans are so vast, we can’t possibly harm them, are uninformed.\u00a0 Oceans have definitely been negatively affected by people on a huge scale to the point where they are in serious danger,\u00a0 and there is no end in sight.\u00a0 Do we really think we can just keep manufacturing plastic and generating garbage and toxins and dump it all\u00a0 into the ocean, into infinity?\u00a0 This is what we’ve been doing.\u00a0 Worse, our CO2 emissions are making the oceans more of an acid bath than a place to take a bath, or fish. \u00a0 The ocean acidification is actually beginning to frighten ocean research scientists, it’s so bad.\u00a0 This can’t keep happening.<\/p>\n
In June, during the 2nd or 3rd wave of anger and disgust over the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the journal Science came out with an extensive report on the oceans.\u00a0 You can only read it here with a subscription, but some points of it are below.\u00a0 The ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill is just one more human activity adding to the inevitable collapse of the oceans unless we do something to change very quickly.<\/p>\n
I really don’t think our politicians understand what is at stake here.\u00a0 In June, 2010, the journal Science reported that ocean acidification is unprecedented.\u00a0 The current condition of the oceans is unprecedented.\u00a0 From Science:<\/p>\n
By spewing carbon dioxide from smokestacks and tailpipes at a gigatons-per-year pace, humans are lowering the pH of the world ocean. The geochemical disruption will reverberate for tens of thousands of years. It’s less clear how marine life will fare. With nothing in the geologic record as severe as the ongoing plunge in ocean pH, paleontologists can’t say for sure how organisms that build carbonate shells or skeletons will react. In the laboratory, corals always do poorly. The lab responses of other organisms are mixed. In the field, researchers see signs that coral growth does slow, oyster larvae suffer, and plankton with calcareous skeletons lose mass.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In seawater of the pH that may prevail [...]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson gave a talk at TED that lays out the evidence that the oceans are slipping away from us \u2014 the compounding factors of intensive overfishing, chemical and material (think plastic) pollution, invasive species and global … Continue reading